Saruman the White Wishes You a ‘Heavy Metal Christmas’

Actor Christopher Lee drops shred-tastic holiday classics

If the wizards of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth each had their own band, we imagine Gandalf would be a lyre and lute kind of guy, but the power-hungry Saruman … he’d need something with a little more heft, like some baroque sword-and-sorcery style heavy fucking metal. Well guess what. He’s got it. As Brooklyn Vegan points out, actor Christopher Lee, known for playing Saruman the White in the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit film series, has a second career in music, and he’s got a holiday record out now called, what else, A Heavy Metal Christmas. The two-song set includes medieval shred-tastic covers of “The Little Drummer Boy” and “Silent Night,” although his vocal performance on the latter seems to reprise Lee’s famous 1958 role as Count Dracula.

As hard as it might be to believe, this isn’t an out-of-the-blue novelty release. In 2010, the man released an entire album of straight-faced heavy metal called Charlemagne: By the Sword and the Cross, and the sequel is due in 2013. Keep an eye (of Sauron) out for Charlemagne: The Omens of Death next year, and for now, revel in “The Bloody Verdict of Verden.”